Dev Insights - Renegades Weapon Tuning Preview

Hello everyone! Today we’re going to kick things off with the first of three articles detailing changes coming to the game’s sandbox in Renegades. Today, we’ve got some general global updates to discuss, and then we’ll dive into everything we’re doing for weapons in terms of the ammo system, archetypes balance, Exotic weapons, and perks. The next two Dev Insights articles on Renegades will cover armor changes and then ability updates.

Global Updates

HUD Buff Priority Update

Most of the character HUD buffs (the buffs that appear against the left side of the screen) have received a priority iteration. It is now much less likely that a player with lots of buffs will have an important buff hidden by a less important one. Get to the back of the line, Void Breach Cooldown.

Artifact's New Gear bonus

The New Gear bonus no longer scales with Gear Tier.

• Bonus weapon damage for New Gear weapons is now 5%.
• Bonus incoming damage reduction for equipping New Gear armor goes up to 10% (2% per equipped piece).

All Exotics now count as New Gear.

• Removed the Featured Exotics sections in Collections, as they are now redundant.

Stasis Freeze

We have updated how frozen targets take increased or decreased damage from weapons based on their ammo type and fixed a handful of outliers that were doing less damage than intended.

• Increased Eriana's Vow and Leviathan's Breath bonus damage to frozen targets from 5% to 10% (matching other Special and Heavy weapons).
• Fixed an issue where Forerunner, Micro-Missile Pulse Rifles, and New Malpais did not deal any increased damage to frozen targets.
• Fighting Lion and Alethonym, though Primary ammo weapons, will still get the 10% damage bonus to frozen targets.

Combat Flair Socket

Updated Combat Flair to be reordered under weapon cosmetics, returning the shader to its left side (sorry for breaking muscle memory).

Disorient

All the following now use a new universal "disorient" setup in the same way as we handle subclass verbs. This will ensure disorient effects are consistent and predictable across all gameplay atoms that use it and opens us up to potentially do more with it in the future. Overall, it will still function as expected: combatants cover their eyes and won't shoot back while players' screens will turn bright while their HUD is removed. Some VFX as the victim in PvP environments might appear slightly different on a case-by-case basis, however these differences should be minor:

• Shield Disorient (Weapon Perk)
• Flash Counter (Weapon Perk)
• Bewildering Burst (Weapon Perk)
• Photoinhibition (Weapon Perk)
• Disorienting Grenades (Weapon Magazine)
• Concussion Grenades (Weapon Magazine)
• Concussive Rounds (Armor Set Bonus)
• Reactive Shock (Armor Set Bonus)
• Gemini Jester (Armor Perk)
• Additional notes:
  • Shield Disorient and Photoinhibition no longer have a damage impulse. This damage impulse did roughly one damage and was using content from another gameplay atom. To avoid potential issues, we have removed this.
• Exceptions:
  • Helm of Saint-14 will be exempt from this update. Leaving it as it will have no effect on its gameplay, but under-the-hood it won't be considered "disorient" in the same way as everything else listed here will be. We are planning on giving this Exotic further attention in a future release.
  • Touch of Malice's Darkness Bolt vs. players is exempt from this update and will continue to be its own bespoke debuff with a unique screen effect. Against combatants, this will continue to Arc Blind as normal.

Ammo System

In PvE, we wanted to focus on three main things: Giving support and objective players more ways to earn ammo that don’t rely on getting kills directly, fixing some bugs with specific weapons that were making it harder to earn ammo, and increasing a handful of Exotic weapons’ and weapon archetypes’ usability by shifting their ammo economies. Alongside this, we also needed to bring down a handful of performance outliers by a small amount.

• Reintroduced ammo scout mods on the helmet, which will spawn an ammo brick for your allies whenever you fill your corresponding meter. The amount of ammo in the brick is dependent on the number of Scout mods you have equipped.
• Ability assists will now generate a small amount of ammo meter progress.
• Granting buffs (Radiant, Overshield, etc.) to allies will grant a small amount of ammo meter progress when they land final blows while buffed.
• Fixed an issue where Glaive projectile kills were not getting correctly scaled by the Ammo Generation stat.
• Fixed an issue where Machine Guns and Lord of Wolves were getting less ammo than intended from Scavenger mods.
• Increased the following Exotic weapons' ammo per brick amounts:

• Truth
• Heir Apparent
• The Colony
• The Prospector
• DARCI
• Salvation's Grip
• Increased the following weapon sub-family's ammo per brick amounts:
  • Heavy Burst Slug Shotguns
  • Rapid Fire Shotguns

• Reduced the following weapon sub-family's ammo per enhanced brick amounts:
• Micro-Missile Pulse Rifles
• We're reducing a few weapon perks’ ammo generation bonuses. These used to provide such large numerical bonuses because inventory stat values needed to pass certain thresholds to have an effect, but now that every point of Ammo Generation matters, their buffs are outsized compared to other options for investment.
• Air Trigger
• Reduced base trait ammo generation increase to 20 (from 30).
• Reduced enhanced trait ammo generation increase to 30 (from 40).
• Field Prep
• Reduced base trait ammo generation increase to 20 (from 30).
• Reduced enhanced trait ammo generation increase to 30 (from 40).
• Envious Arsenal
• Reduced enhanced traits increased ammo generation to 10 (from 20).

In the Crucible, after the most recent changes to Special ammo generation we’ve seen Special weapon usage rise back up a fair amount, while remaining more constrained than it has been in most other ammo systems. The bulk of our work moving forward will now be to tune the Special weapons themselves, allowing the limited uptime weapons to better function as a limited power spike. We’ll be buffing several special weapons, to be discussed below, and shifting a few outliers down a bit, but we also wanted to make a quality-of-life change to the Special ammo bricks themselves to make it a little easier to collect a brick that you created.

• Increased the lifetime of dropped ammo bricks in Crucible from 30 seconds to 60 seconds.

Weapon Archetypes

Sidearms

While semi-auto Sidearms are very strong in the hands of controller players, on mouse and keyboard they can struggle due to the barrel moving upwards and covering the target for an extended duration. We’ve done some custom tuning to a handful of Sidearms to experiment with a less obtrusive recoil animation, and we’ll be rolling it out gradually to help provide more options for Sidearm gameplay on mouse and keyboard outside of just the Heavy Bursts.

• General
• Altered the firing animation for some long barreled Sidearms to hide the reticle for a reduced duration:
• Heliocentric
• Faustus Decline
• Compact Defender
• And a handful of older Sidearms with silencers/extended barrels as part of their physical model.

Submachine Guns 

Inverse to the issue with Sidearms we mentioned above, we are seeing many controller players struggle to use SMGs outside of very close range due to difficulty maintaining accuracy throughout the engagement. We have also been slowly increasing the range SMGs can operate in to give them some breathing room versus Sidearms and Spreadshot Hand Cannons, and will be continuing that process with the popular Lightweight sub-family.

• General
• Increased stability by 10% on controller.
• Lightweight
• Increased ADS Damage Falloff Scalar from 1.4 to 1.45.

Pulse Rifles 

Rapid Fire Pulse Rifles are lagging the other more popular Pulse Rifle sub-families in terms of both PvP and PvE effectiveness, so we have increased their base damage slightly to grant them easier access to both a more forgiving base time to kill and time to kill shifts with smaller damage boosts.

• Rapid Fires
• Increased base damage from 15 to 15.5, increased crit damage from 27.75 to 27.9.

Bows 

Bows needed just a little bit of help in PvE and PvP, so we have rescaled their draw time curves to be slightly faster and more forgiving across the board. Lightweight Bows will retain their same minimum draw time, but their base value and the value when increased by a perk have been reduced. Combat Bows have had their draw times dropped slightly across the entire curve.

• Recurve Bows
• Rescaled draw time to be slightly faster at base and less punishing if increased
• Base draw time: 580 to 567.
• High Tension String draw time: 620 to 600.
• Compound Bows
• Rescaled draw time to be slightly faster at base and higher stat values, and less punishing if increased
• Base draw time: 684 to 667.
• High Tension String draw time: 720 to 700.
• Elastic String draw time: 612 to 600.

Fusion Rifles 

With the increased special ammo gains in the Crucible, Fusion Rifles have been signaled out by the community as being problematic with higher uptime.

Rescaling the charge times will provide a better balance between the subfamilies and the reduction to DPS from the slightly slower charge times is more than offset by the increase to PvE damage for the Adaptive, Precision, and High Impact frames.

In addition, this makes it less punishing to increase your charge time and less beneficial to reduce it, which will help to provide better variety in terms of perk selection among Fusion Rifles.

• Rescaled Fusion Rifle charge times.
• Rapid Fires: 500 to 533.
• Adaptives and Aggressives: 660 to 667.
• Precisions: 780 to 800.
• High Impacts: 960 to 967.
• Precisions, Adaptives, Aggressives
• Increased PvE bonus damage scalar from 2.5% to 6.7%.
• High Impacts
• Increased PvE bonus damage scalar from 6.7% to 15%.

Shotguns 

Shotguns, while prevalent in Crucible, have almost all their usage focused on the Precision Pellet frame, and have fallen behind other options in PvE. We have buffed all pellet Shotgun frames damage in PvE by varying degrees, and we have also buffed the damage against players for the Aggressive and Lightweight frame Shotguns.

• Rapid Fires
• Added a 2.5% PvE bonus damage scalar.
• Increased ammo per brick in PvE from three to four base, and six to eight enhanced.
• Lightweight
• Increased damage per pellet from 22 to 23.
• Increased PvE bonus damage from 12.5% to 15%.
• Precision Pellets
• Increased PvE bonus damage from 12.5% to 15%.
• Aggressives
• Increased damage per pellet from 26.7 to 28.
• Increased PvE bonus damage from 12.5% to 20%.

Slug Shotguns 

Pinpoint Slug Shotguns, like Rapid Fire Fusions Rifles, have become a bit too effective in higher skill Crucible lobbies, in large part due to their forgiving damage profile and substantial aim assist cones. As such, we have reduced their aim assist cone slightly and dropped their base damage versus players. To make sure they retain the same lethal kill ranges they currently have with critical hits, we have increased their ADS damage falloff range by a small amount

We also took this opportunity to correct a bug where Assault Mag increased the RPM of Rapid Fire Slug Shotguns by an enormous amount, but we kept it a little spicier than normal at +20 RPM and buffed their PvE damage bonus a bit too. We’ve also further buffed Heavy Burst slug range, to better differentiate them from the other Slug Shotgun sub-families.

• General
• Reduced Aim Assist cone size by 1% at the low end of the stat, and 3% at the high end of the stat.
• Corrected the RPM displays in game to be more accurate (this does not affect gameplay; it is purely visual).
• Rapid Fire Slugs
• Increased PvE bonus damage from 8.3% to 11%.
• Fixed an issue where Assault Mag would increase RPM by 50.
• Pinpoint Slugs
• Decreased damage against players by 6%.
• Increased ADS Damage Falloff Scalar from 1.2 to 1.25.
• Heavy Burst Slugs
• Increased ADS Damage Falloff Scalar from 1.2 to 1.3.
• Increased ammo per brick in PvE from three to six base, and six to 12 enhanced.

Snipers 

Snipers have seen their effectiveness increase since we started granting them two shots from dropped bricks in PvP, but the amount of flinch they take from other players still feels too jarring. We have further reduced the flinch they take from players, and while this is still more flinch than they took before we made the original change, we believe this will strike more of a balance between allowing players to counter a hard-scoped Sniper and not making your weapon feel like it is being kicked when you take damage.

• Reduced flinch received from players by 40%.

Rocket Pulse Rifles 

Debuting with Edge of Fate, this new weapon type has become near ubiquitous with the Kinetic slot. In reviewing our data, players feel almost pressured to run this weapon to fit the meta due to its ammo uptime, strong damage profile, and ease of use. With Mint Retrograde being in the Kinetic slot around 45% of the time, we feel this is a bit unhealthy and too dominant. Therefore, we’re going to let it keep its power on the battlefield, but reign in the ammo economy by reducing reserves and the amount of ammo acquired per enhanced brick slightly. With buffs to other weapon types like shotguns, changes to a suite of exotics, and new weapons to chase with novel gameplay in Renegades, we feel this makes for a more diverse selection of loadouts and power fantasies. For players who really favor Mint Retrograde or want to try their hands with a new Rocket Pulse in Renegades, build craft options are expanded slightly for ammo generation with scouts returning and more assist play contributing, meaning ammo uptime can be solved for. We don’t make this change lightly and will be keeping a close eye on reception as folks analyze the overall meta shakeup and theorycraft what builds they want to construct.

• Reduced the base reserve ammo for Rocket Pulse Rifles from 18 to 14.
• Reduced enhanced ammo per brick in PvE (as mentioned in the Ammo section) from six to five enhanced.

Swords 

With the Slashening behind us, we took a look at some underlying weirdness that has persisted in Swords since their inception way back in The Taken King. Now, Swords when empty should perform more like swinging an empty hilt than swinging your fist.

• Reduced empty Sword swing damage.
• Empty Sword swings are no longer are scaled by melee buffs.
• Fixed an issue where Ascension was activating Sword perks.

Exotics

Ace of Spades 

Ace has long been potent in the Crucible but has been overshadowed by many things in PvE in today’s Destiny. We’ve made some buffs to Memento Mori and Ace’s own version of Firefly to help it compete against the likes of Sunshot and its kin; it's what Cayde would’ve wanted.

• Increased extra PvE damage bonus of Memento Mori from 18% to 30%.
• Ace of Spades’ Firefly.
  • Increased maximum damage in PvE from 65 to 100.
  • Increased minimum damage in PvE from 0 to 20.
  • Increased area of effect size from 6m to 7.5m.
  • Increased damage falloff start from 30% of area of effect size to 50% (will keep full damage for more distance).

Hawkmoon

Hawkmoon promises big rewards for perfect accuracy, but this has not felt very worthwhile in PvE, specifically. We’ve added a damage bonus gained per stack of Paracausal Charge to further reward pacing your shots and remaining accurate even in PvE. This also allows you to go for final blows instead of precision hits if you already have high stacks later in the mag.

• Now gets a PvE damage bonus per stack of Paracausal Charge.
  • Maxes out at 70% at x8 Paracausal Charge.
  • Does not include the final Paracausal Shot.

Osteo Striga 

We’re halving the Osteo Striga poison burst cooldown and seeing where this lands. This is a weapon that can dominate the PvE meta, especially in conjunction with Necrotic Grips, so we’re being a bit cautious here, but we also don’t want to leave longtime fans of this weapon feeling like it’s been gutted.

• Reduced the cooldown of the poison burst on Osteo Striga final blow from four seconds to two.

Suros Regime 

Suros Regime is a solid, versatile workhorse weapon with a storied history. In today’s sandbox, however, it struggles to compete outside its niche PvP following. We’ve updated it to fit a role within weapon-centric builds and given it a bit of QoL on its mode swap.

• Can now be special reloaded at-will to swap between Spinning up and Dual-Speed Receiver behaviors.
  • Added new hip-fire reticle elements that correspond with each firing mode.
• Grants bonus Special ammo progress with spun up kills while using Spinning Up.
• Grants bonus Heavy ammo progress on Dual-Speed Receiver kills while ADS.

Revision Zero 

We thought Revision Zero could use a little more spice, and adding some of the newer Kinetic aligned effects seemed like the perfect tie-in.

• Hunter's Trace rounds now create a small damaging shockwave and Exhausts targets on impact.

Touch of Malice 

Touch of Malice can be a strong weapon, but the healing part of the intrinsic perk, which is supposed to help offset the self-damage, was too niche and hard to activate. We’ve made the healing more effective and easier to trigger in PvE, and you will also heal every time you special reload to activate the Charged with Blight perk.

• Increased the amount of healing provided by the intrinsic perk.
• Reduced the number of kills needed to trigger the healing in PvE, and activating Charged with Blight will now fire the healing impulse.

Collective Obligation

In the right build, Collective Obligation is potent but asks quite a lot of the player. The current version requires you or your fireteam to provide a source of Volatile, Weaken, and Suppression for the weapon to leech from to get the most out of it, which isn’t always practical or feasible with currently viable builds or available artifact perks. We’ve relaxed that requirement somewhat by adding a very slow rate of leeching debuffs on any damage dealt with the weapon. This can open this up to more Prismatic or non-Void builds and relaxes some of the need to deploy every debuff yourself on Void-centric builds.

• Added a very slow rate of leeching effects off unaffected targets. Gives each effect in order of effectiveness with around a full mag of hits (per debuff).
  • Volatile -> Weaken -> Suppression
• Also charges the leech mode at the same rate.

Symmetry 

Symmetry is an interesting weapon but still feels like it’s not quite worth the effort of its loop. With the introduction and popularization of Bolt Charge (particularly with Storm’s Keep), this seemed a solid addition to the weapon; especially adding a new way to spend Bolt Charge via the weapon itself.

• Now builds Bolt Charge with > one stack of Dynamic Charge in alt fire mode.
  • Grants more stacks at >10x Dynamic Charge.
• Now can spend Bolt Charge with >1 stack of Dynamic Charge in alt fire mode.
• Increased base reload stat by 20.

Still Hunt 

A Golden Gun-inspired Sniper Rifle Exotic that requires precision hits really ought to be one of the best damage options for Hunters. Let’s fix that.

• Buffed Still Hunt's Golden Gun damage while using Celestial Nighthawk by 40%.
• Allowed Sniper's Meditation to buff Still Hunt's Golden Gun shots.

Witherhoard

Witherhoard has been feeling a bit lackluster since the nerf to Auto-Loading Holster, but prior to the nerfs it was not problematic. Plus, Area Denial Grenade Launchers can cover more of the battlefield a bit more easily. Rather than simply reverting that nerf, we thought we’d break the bank and let it shine as an iconic swap-focused weapon.

• Reduced Silent Alarm auto-load time from 3.5 seconds to two.

Duality 

Duality is a “the best of both worlds” style Exotic, but we still think it could be just a little better in terms of its hip fire effectiveness.

• Reduced hip fire spread by 6%

The Chaperone 

The Chaperone, like other Slug Shotguns, has become something of a menace in high-skill PvP lobbies. With its faster rate of fire, high damage, and generous aim assist, there weren’t many downsides to using it compared to other special weapons. Inversely, despite several buffs it continues to struggle in PvE. Changing it to use the Rapid-Fire frame damage and rate of fire profiles will be a small nerf to ease of use in PvP but a larger buff in PvE, bringing it more in line with other options.

• Changed Chaperone to use the Rapid-Fire Slug frame damage and rate of fire profile.

Ruinous Effigy 

Ruinous Effigy has seen niche usage over time but could still use a bit of attention. We’ve updated its catalyst to grant a damage bonus to the weapon after any final blow or damage to a miniboss or higher target to help the weapon loop into its next orb or burn down priority targets.

• Catalyst now grants a 30% (15% in PvP) damage buff to the Trace Rifle when killing anything with the Transmutation Orb or damaging a miniboss/boss/Champion with a Transmutation Orb.

Izanagi's Burden 

With the character stat rework and weapons-focused builds now being more of a supported playstyle, we’ve re-enabled the special reload on Izanagi’s Burden to be able to benefit from the Reload Speed stat and similar effects. Get those Izi-swap builds back out of the vault!

• Special Reload once again scales with reload speed stat.

Tessellation 

This Fusion Rifle offers a variety of strong subclass synergy options but can feel sluggish to use due to the special reload. While we wanted to maintain the longer special reload time due to the power of the shot, we opted to reduce the friction of it in other ways while offering additional benefits (on top of its existing ones) to further encourage use with Transcendence.

• Property: Undecidable
  • Final blows now also grant 2.5% light and dark Transcendence energy, and grant bonus time to Transcendence while active.
  • Fixed an issue where Transcendence grenade chunk energy gains were not scaling based on the grenade stat.
• Property: Irreducible
  • While Transcendence is active, special reload shots now deal 25% more damage when combined with the Transcendence damage buff.
  • Special reloading now reloads the mag from reserves, and you can now special reload while you have zero ammo in the mag.
• Catalyst
  • Increased applied Scorch stacks from 15(+5) to 70(+10), and Slow stacks from 30 to 80.
  • Subclass keyword application is now near immediate, though it still does not apply before the primary explosion.
• Misc
  • Updated the timing of the reload for Tessellation and Jötunn so that ammo is added to the mag slightly sooner, properly lining up with the animation.

Deathbringer

Deathbringer is potent and chaotic to wield, sometimes a bit more than is worth the effort. We’ve narrowed the spread on the secondary projectiles to make it a bit more predictable to hit targets directly under where you choose to deploy the clusters.

• Reduced the spread of the secondary cluster munitions after they are created.

Black Talon 

Black Talon is strong in its own way but struggles to keep up in today’s buildcrafting world. We’ve made a few changes in this pass allowing it to fit better in Void-oriented builds, while also carving away some of its extreme ammo hunger like we did with Worldline Zero and Heartshadow in 9.0.0.

• Heavy attack now suppresses on hits. If target is already suppressed, it spreads to nearby targets.
• Catalyst:
  • On hit gives a 10% damage boost per void debuff on the target for 2s.
• Reduced heavy attack cost to three ammo from four.
• Added Duelist's Trance trait.
• Increased max reserve ammo.

Deterministic Chaos 

Deterministic Chaos has a good ammo economy and decent total damage, but it needs to be reloaded frequently and lacks a distinct gameplay fantasy next to Thunderlord.

• New effect: Releasing the trigger after a Vexadecimal projectile pulls 12 rounds into the magazine from reserves.

Worldline Zero 

With the changes in the 9.0.0 patch, Worldline Zero faced a frustrating bug causing the Tesseract attack to deal MUCH less damage than intended. We’ve remedied that with the following, as well as giving it a little extra love to make up for the missed damage during Season of Reclamation.

• Fixed an issue where Tesseract was only hitting one instance of damage instead of the usual five.
• Increased the damage instances via Tesseract from five to seven (~40% damage increase).
• Reduced time between these instances from .66s to .44s.
• Fixed an issue where chaining tesseract was inconsistent if the player had the Wordline Zero catalyst equipped.
• Reduced the cost of chained tesseract blinks from 20% Sword energy to 10% per.

Wolfsbane 

With Wolfsbane pulled through time and into our hands, we are largely happy with how people have reacted to it. But, it shipped a little under where we wanted. While it should feel like a weapon that encourages you to reap from your foes, the juice at current doesn’t feel worth the squeeze.

• Increased damage of light attack by 8.5% (closer to lament or aggressive Swords).
• Increased nano assault duration from 10s to 12s, which makes the tornados feel a little more forgiving.
• Increased Swarm-nado damage by ~20%.
• Retuned Axe Handles
• Increased damage resistance on each handle by ~5%.
• Increased damage resistance linger time from 3s to 5s.
• Reduced internal cooldown on Subroutine: ~Recursion's extra nanites from 5s to 2s.
• Adjusted damage increased when used on ~A F F L I C T E D targets to ramp slightly quicker.

Perks

Rangefinder 

Ever since zoom was decoupled from damage falloff, Rangefinder has no longer fully lived up to its name. We wanted to give it some help to hone it in as a range increasing perk.

• Now also provides +10 range while aiming down sights.

Rampage 

Rampage is THE original damage perk but has fallen out of favor as more desirable perk options have been added. We want Rampage to remain a solid damage perk option that any player can pick up and find success with, and to achieve this we’ve added some flexibility to the timer.

• Now loses only one stack of the damage buff when the timer expires (yes, this includes Huckleberry).

Box Breathing 

Box Breathing has fallen behind in PvE, and mostly only sees use in PvP with Scout Rifles. Because it would buff the precision scaler of the weapon, different weapon types would see different damage increase values. We decided to retune how Box Breathing's damage buff is applied to simplify the setup, which in turn increases the value on most weapon types.

• Box Breathing now provides a flat 40% buff to your next shot’s precision damage for all existing weapon types and 30% for the new Heavy ammo Sniper. This works out to be a buff of around 10% for existing Snipers and LFRs, and a small nerf for Scout Rifles.

Shot Swap 

Shot Swap fails to provide enough of a benefit to feel worth choosing over other swap-focused perks. The swap charges could also feel clunky to read and manage. We wanted to address these concerns to help it compete with perks that have a similar focus, while also maintaining a distinct use case for it.

• The swap benefits are now more potent. New values are:
• 0.7 ready speed multiplier, 0.65 enhanced. Previously, 0.75, 0.70 enhanced.
• 0.7 stow speed multiplier, 0.65 enhanced. Previously, 0.90, 0.85 enhanced.
• You now only lose one charge on stow. Previously you would lose one on stow and one on ready (effectively losing two every swap).
• As a result, the maximum number of charges that can be held has been reduced from eight to six. This is an effective increase, buffing six swaps at six charges instead of the previous four swaps at eight charges.
• The HUD buff no longer appears while stowed.
• To maintain parity between each other, the Sturm catalyst has received some minor tweaks:
• Now loses a charge on stow (previously would lose one on ready). This should have no negative impact on the number of swaps this will benefit.
• The HUD buff now only appears while Sturm or a Together Forever weapon is in hand.

Sleight of Hand 

Sleight of Hand also struggles to hold its own against other swap-focused perks. We decided to give it some flexibility and allow the user to choose when they want to swap to the weapon. We also discovered an issue where the buff could potentially not activate despite getting a kill, so we fixed this.

• Increased the duration of the buff to 8.5 seconds (9 enhanced) from 7 seconds (7.5 enhanced).
• You no longer need to swap to the weapon within five seconds of getting a kill. Instead the buff timer will activate upon your next swap to the weapon regardless of how long ago your last kill was.
• Added a timer to the HUD buff.
• Fixed an issue where you could potentially lose newly gained stacks if you swapped off the weapon while the buff was still active.

Bray Legacy 

When Bray Legacy was made for Vesper’s Host, it was tuned particularly for the weapons it was on. At the time, these weapons all had dependable amounts of damage instances they might be able to cause on each trigger pull. With its expansion out to other weapons now, we’ve seen it dramatically overperform when paired with perks that break this expectation, so we are tuning it accordingly for just the outliers.

• Increased gains for rocket launchers from 10% per rocket to 17%.
• No longer activates from explosions caused by perks or from Gjallarhorn micro-missiles.

Veist Stinger 

Veist Stinger was newly added to Shotguns and Fusions in The Edge of Fate but didn’t work properly with them. We’ve fixed this.

• Fixed an issue where the Veist Stinger origin trait wasn't working on Veist Fusion Rifles or Shotguns.

Bewildering Burst 

With the changes to Disorient listed above, we wanted to bring this perk in line with other Disorienting options.

• Disorient duration increased from 0.5s to 1.0s against players. Enhanced duration increased from 0.7s to 1.25s.

Shield Disorient, Photoinhibition, Disorienting Grenades, Concussion Grenades 

Since Disorient is now a verb, we can apply it more broadly than we could before with the various bespoke effects.

• Fixed an issue where these perks would not apply the Disorient effect to bosses.

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That’s all we have to share today, but much more is coming. We have Dev Insights articles dropping every week before Renegades launches on December 2, along with trailers and our weekly TWIDs, so stay tuned to learn all about our next expansion.